Saturday, December 17, 2016

The recent passing of former Supervisor Gary Giacomini and the resignation of Supervisor Steve Kinsey may mean the Lucas Valley Scenic Road has a chance after all. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful roads and a gateway to West Marin.

Here is a clip of Gary Giacomini berating Supervisor Damon Connolly for attempting to bring the issue for a vote in 2015. Both Damon Connolly and the Lucas Valley Scenic Road proposal are very popular in Lucas Valley. The passing of "Godfather" of Marin politics Giacomini and the resignation of Supervisor Steve Kinsey (now facing serious ethics charges for his work on the California Coastal Commission) usher a new era in Marin County politics.

A plan to allow doctors’ offices in a Strawberry office complex has died on the vine.

San Francisco-based Bentley Holdings Inc. decided to sell the property at 1 and 2 Belvedere Place in mid-November despite winning county approval for its plan to lease space to Marin General Hospital for medical offices. Approvals followed a lengthy county review process.

Neighbors opposed the plan, fearing it would add to traffic congestion in the area; a group filed suit to block the scheme after county supervisors gave the plan the green light in April. See article HERE

Editor"s Note: Strawberry Residents asked for REALISTIC traffic data of this crowded area and the Supervisors, Developer and the Marin IJ called them NIMBYs. If you read the comments on the Marin IJ following the article you will find the full story. The lesson for Marinwood Lucas Valley is community involvement is the ONLY way to shape the community. Developers win while we sleep.

How would you feel if a cop enticed you into accepting a fake Facebook friend request, then ran your posts through a machine learning program to “detect” your emotions? That’s what Boston’s police department wants to be able to do. And it makes the social media monitoring operations in the Chicago area that we reported on on Wednesday seem like child’s play.

Boston police are facing pushback from community groups and city council members for their quiet plans to acquire $1.4 million worth of social media monitoring software that would have surveillance capabilities far beyond the tools used by other police departments around the country.The department’s request for proposal calls for a program that uses machine learning and natural language processing to determine “sentiment” and “hostile verbiage” in social media posts. The tool would also help police operate and expand the number of covert social media accounts, or “virtual identities,” used in their social media monitoring. The RFP also discusses numerous ways to collect and map users’ posts, associates, and locations through sophisticated network and GIS mapping techniques.

The surveillance program has attracted opposition from civil liberties groups and at city council meetings, but, as of now, the police commissioner William Evans and Mayor Martin J. Walsh seem set on seeing it through, citing terrorism and other threats to public safety. “We’re not going after ordinary people,” Evans told WGBH Boston. “It’s a necessary tool of law enforcement and helps in keeping our neighborhoods safe from violence, as well as terrorism, human trafficking, and young kids who might be the victim of a pedophile.”“The tech has evolved rapidly, and the law is lagging behind.”The program will be operated by the department’s Boston Regional Intelligence Center and personnel from the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region, according to The Boston Globe. Some police social media programs around the country have adopted a less invasive approach than what is currently being proposed in Boston, and at a far lesser cost. In Arlington, Virginia, for example, police uses a system, called Social Sentinel, that alerts law enforcement about threats via text, e-mail, and daily reports by looking for key terms posted rather than individual accounts.

Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, worries that the program’s automated data processing capabilities will vastly increase social media surveillance on innocent people.“Right now, if they want to create a fake Twitter profile, an individual analyst has to go through all the work of maintaining their profile information and making sure to route their activities with the right IP addresses,” says Crockford. “But with this, they’ll have an automated system to do that work. That means exponential growth in the number of users they can target.”

Some city council members and civil liberties groups have expressed concerns about who the targets of this enhanced surveillance will be. In 2012, documents obtained by the ACLU of Massachusetts and the National Lawyers Guild showed that the Boston Regional Intelligence Center monitored the internal activities of political groups and filmed protests associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to WBUR. The operations labeled peace groups such as Veterans for Peace, United for Justice with Peace, and Stop the Wars Coalition as “extremist.”
In another case, from March, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center provided intelligence for a “gang raid” at the Lenox Street Housing Development in Boston’s South End that nabbed 27 people. All were arrested on non-violent drug and firearms charges. The indictment cites evidence from a music video posted to YouTube in July 2014, involving residents of the housing project who “appear to be openly smoking marijuana.”
Police officials defend the program by pointing out that the data they would be monitoring is open source. “The technology will be used in accordance to strict policies and procedures and within the parameters of state and federal laws,” police spokesman Lieutenant Detective Michael McCarthy said in a statement to The Boston Globe. “The information looked at is only what is already publicly available.”
Thomas Nolan, an Associate Professor in Criminology at Merrimack College and a former lieutenant in the Boston Police Department, argues that this claim is misleading. “They have access to mountains of data that none of us could ever retain and sift through, so its not just as simple as looking at publicly available data,” he says. “Thirty years ago, to establish these kinds of criminal links and charts they’d have to get a warrant to get data from phone companies … But the tech has evolved rapidly, and the law is lagging behind.”
Nolan believes that images from publicly posted social media could be taken out of context and used unfairly to arrest and prosecute people, especially young, poor people from black and Latino communities. “This is subject to anyone’s interpretation, particularly if the data is taken from a community that uses language in a way different from the mainstream dominant culture,” he says. “The meanings of gestures, words, and pictures in their communications are different… so if you are basing the foundation of your investigation on a fiction, and using that to establish probable cause, that would be troubling.”As of now, police have not made their selection of the would-be vendor of this program public, and many other questions about how the program would work remain unanswered. “The Boston Police Department is not the NSA, but it seems to think it needs to be, for reasons that are unknown to anybody in Boston,” says the ACLU’s Crockford. “The LAPD paid $70,000 for social media monitoring over a three year period, and L.A. is way bigger. What could BPD possibly need to do with 1.4 million worth of software?”

They're like Guy Fawkes masks that look like real people: A group wears the paper URME masks. URME Surveillance
If the world starts looking like a scene from "Matrix 3" where everyone has Agent Smith's face, you can thank Leo Selvaggio.
His rubber mask aimed at foiling surveillance cameras features his visage, and if he has his way, plenty of people will be sporting the Personal Surveillance Identity Prosthetic in public. It's one of three products made by the Chicago-based artist's URME Surveillance, a venture dedicated to "protecting the public from surveillance and creating a safe space to explore our digital identities."

Leo Selvaggio's face could be yours. URME Surveillance
"Our world is becoming increasingly surveilled. For example, Chicago has over 25,000 cameras networked to a single facial recognition hub," reads the URME (pronounced U R Me) site. "We don't believe you should be tracked just because you want to walk outside and you shouldn't have to hide either. Instead, use one of our products to present an alternative identity when in public."
The 3D-printed resin mask, made from a 3D scan of Selvaggio's face and manufactured by ThatsMyFace.com, renders his features and skin tone with surprising realism, though the eyes peeping out from the eye holes do lend a certain creepiness to the look.

Creepiness is, of course, part of the point here, as the interdisciplinary artist takes a his-face-in-everyone's-face approach to exploring the impact of an increasingly networked world on personal identity.

"When you wear these devices the cameras will track me instead of you and your actions in public space will be attributed as mine because it will be me the cameras see," the artist, who's working toward his MFA at Chicago's Columbia College, says on a recently launched Indiegogo page for the products. "All URME devices have been tested for facial recognition and each properly identifies the wearer of me on Facebook, which has some of the most sophisticated facial recognition software around."

It turns out some states have anti-mask laws. And Selvaggio -- whose earlier project You Are Me let others use his social-media profiles -- says he's considered the possibility that anyone wearing his face in public could engage in illegal activity.

"I would of course like to believe that others will use these devices responsibly and I can't be clearer that I do not condone criminal activity," he told Crave. "However it is possible, and I have weighed out the possibility that a crime may become associated with me. That being said, I have come to the conclusion that it is worth the risk if it creates public discourse around surveillance practices and how it affects us all."

URME's Indiegogo campaign has so far raised a little over $500 of its $1,000 goal, with 36 days left. Products include a $1 paper mask for those unable to afford the $200 prosthetic, as well as community development hacktivist kits of 12-24 paper masks meant to be worn by groups, presumably of protesters (or anyone into clone armies).

Open-source facial-encryption software that replaces faces in video with Selvaggio's is currently in the prototype stage and will most likely go through several iterations, Selvaggio says, before eventually becoming available as a free download from the URME website.

URME insists all products will be sold at cost, with no profit made and all proceeds going to sustain URME's efforts to keep surveillance in the public discourse.

"To be clear, I am not anti-surveillance," the artist told Crave. "What I am pushing for is increasing the amount of public discourse about surveillance and how it affects our behavior in public space. When we are watched we are fundamentally changed. We perform rather than be."

Steve Kinsey, during the CCC meeting that sacked Charles Lester. Photo: LA Times

Remember a couple months back when members of the California Coastal Commission (CCC), in a thinly-veiled power grab by influential developers (allegedly), voted to oust their longtime executive director and champion of the environment, Charles Lester? If you watched the live feed of the hearings that day, you may remember a Larry Bird lookalike running the meeting. Funny-ish, but with a penchant for harshing the protesting crowd’s mellow. That was Steve Kinsey, chairman of the CCC.
It turns out that Kinsey has held private, unreported (until now) meetings with — and this should shock nobody — the heads of big development groups. Specifically with the Banning Ranch developers, a group that wants to put more condos, more shops, more parking lots — because Orange County needs more of all that — on Newport Beach’s Banning Ranch, the largest bit of undeveloped private coastal land left in Southern California
Kinsey will now likely sit out a vote on the Banning Ranch project after the L.A. Times discovered that he failed to report his meetings with the Banning Ranch folks, which is against the CCC’s rules. Kinsey’s excuse: I forgot I had the meeting.
Kinsey has met with Banning Ranch developers twice in the past year — both meetings went unreported — and spent hours touring the site, during which he came to the conclusion that the CCC’s environmental scientists, who had recommended against okaying development in order to protect environmentally sensitive land, were totally wrong and that development wouldn’t hurt a thing.

Newport Beach’s Banning Ranch, the biggest piece of private, undeveloped land left in Southern California.

These sorts of hush-hush meetings between often deep-pocketed development interests and the regulators who are supposed to protect the coastal environment from ruinous building are called “ex parte” meetings, and, not coincidentally, a bill is currently before the California State Senate this week that will make those meetings illegal.

Theoretically, if developers aren’t allowed to cozy up to CCC regulators in private meetings (No doubt over pricey, expense-account-fueled lunchtime bacchanals), they can’t wield undue influence in decision-making.
It remains to be seen whether or not the CCC’s sacking of Lester will open the door for greater and more destructive development of California’s coastline, but these little clandestine meetings sure aren’t making the CCC, as least as currently constructed, look particularly impartial.

Read more at http://www.surfermag.com/features/coastal-commission-chairman-holds-shady-meetings/#TQ3S8DwqkXSjiuyu.99

Monday, December 12, 2016

Here is the salary list from 2014 for Marinwood Community Services District. Remember, it is significantly higher pay today with the new staff and raises. If a firefighter retires at 50 years old at 90% pay, it is possible that he will live another 35 years. This represents a multimillion liability PER EMPLOYEE. I am for fair pay for all of our staff but the benefits must be sustainable and reflect the real world of the taxpayers ability to pay. Our long term liabilities far exceed our total assets and our ability to pay in Marinwood CSD. We are financially INSOLVENT.Information provided by www.transparentcalifornia.com. You can see the full list of 2014* total compensation for Marinwood CSD HERE*Unlike most other state agencies, Marinwood CSD's 2015 employee compensation does not appear in the database.

About SaveMarinwood.org

Our community is what we make it. Marinwood-Lucas Valley is on the eve of a fateful decision by the Marin County Board of Supervisors to designate our community with 71% of all affordable housing in unincorporated Marin. If built to plan it will swell our community by 25% and add 600-1000 school children to the Dixie School District. Since affordable housing developments pay virtually no taxes, the community will have to pay for the $6 million to $10 million annually estimated to educate these children. Our total budget for the Marinwood CSD is $4.2 million dollars. Clearly it will have a severe impact on our community.

We support a fair allocation of affordable housing in our community that is sensitive to land use, is fiscally responsible, healthy for the families and integrates diversity within our community.

Unfortunately, planners, politicians and political insiders made their plans without us.